Tag Archives: Last Day

Wednesday, the last day of the tour. This morning we went to IMB- the institute for molecular biology at Biopolis, we were given a tour of their laboratories, which as every place we have been, were very good. We then had a look at their microscopy unit, where they had a few confocal microscopes, a super resolution microscope, which provides a way to overcome the diffraction limit of light microscopes, and then some microscopes for live tissue cells, which were contained in a Perspex box which could have all ambient conditions controlled to keep the cell alive.

Professor Victor Nurcombe then talked to us about Singapore’s opportunities and how money is no object for research and Singapore is also home to most millionaire households per capita. He then went on to talk about some of his research, which was pretty amazing, basically he worked out that the sugars that activate stem cells can be used to re grow bones, capillaries and many other hard to repair cells.

We then had lunch, and went to NUS. We went to the surface science department, and had a tour of their laboratories, which had mass spectrometers and scanning tunnelling microscopes. I found the tour pretty interesting as I have just learnt how these microscopes work so it was good to see them in real life and talk to people that use them. We then had a quick tour of the NUS synchrotron as we were running a bit behind schedule, I also found this interesting as it was my first time visiting a synchrotron.

To finish off the tour, we went back to IMRE, where we had a talk with Shaun and Nicolai and had some coffee and biscuits for about an hour. Nicolai was very interesting to talk to, he told us about alternate light sources, which are made from gallium nitride and have a life span of 50 years if they are used for 6 hours a day, and they are 3 times more energy efficient than current power saving light globes. After the coffee break, we had completed the study tour, a few of the guys and me had a couple of beers and relaxed for the rest of the night.